(FINANCIAL TIMES) - For most of the past year, students at True Light College, a secondary school for girls in Kowloon, Hong Kong, have been attending classes from home. But unlike most children around the world forced into home-schooling during the pandemic, the students at True Light are being watched as they sit at their desks. Unblinking eyes scrutinise each child's facial expressions through their computer's cameras.

The "eyes" belong to a piece of software called 4 Little Trees, an artificial intelligence program that claims it can read the children's emotions as they learn. The program's goal is to help teachers make distance learning more interactive and personalised, by responding to an individual student's reactions in real time.